


Seed

by Paian



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Alien Culture, Alien Planet, Dubious Consent, F/M, First Time, M/M, Multi, Season/Series 05, Season/Series 08-09 Hiatus, Wordcount: 10.000-30.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-25
Updated: 2011-07-25
Packaged: 2017-10-21 18:24:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/228234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paian/pseuds/Paian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aliens need their sperm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seed

"And I have to witness this _why_?" Jack said.

He hadn't meant to shout, or even raise his voice, but for that second he'd nearly lost it, and it showed. The eyes of all the elders turned to him, then turned to the tent.

Crap. They were going to think there was something wrong with the girl. They'd just paraded her past for his approval, then taken her around back of the tent to "prepare" her, which, if he didn't want to think about, he shouldn't be allowing to happen either, but if he backed out now they'd blame it on some defect in her. Or trot out her backup. If he'd understood correctly, there was a queue of volunteers, willing if not eager to play Outlander Sperm Powerball.

Crap, crap, crap. He made himself turn and raise loose, peaceable hands. _It's OK, fellas. No problem here. Don't mind me. She's great. She's fine. No problem at all._ He pulled his lips back, and it was somewhere between a snarly smirk and a feral teeth-baring, but enough of them took it as a real smile. Collectively they brightened and relaxed.

"Because I'm your property," Daniel answered, calmly and quietly. "Civilized men look after their property."

Offspring were property too, which was why they hadn't even tried to barter for Jack's sperm. The point was to provide a healthy child for the community, and the community chest couldn't swing an outlander lord's progeny.

"I can look after you just fine from outside the door," Jack said, just as quietly now, conversationally, broadcasting calm body language to the group by the tent.

"I'm a servant," Daniel said. "That means I'm not permitted to penetrate anyone anally, ever. That's considered the best kind of sex, and it gets reserved for the dominant caste. Heterosexual sex is for reproduction, sex between women keeps them happy and obedient, service males can have oral and manual sex with each other, and male lords get to penetrate other males. They assume that if given a chance, a lower-caste male permitted to penetrate a woman to impregnate her will try to penetrate her anally, too, to get a hit of what he's not allowed otherwise. Your presence in the tent assures that I won't do that."

"Why the hell should they care, if I'm the one it would ... what, insult?"

Stalling. So stalling. They should have gone back with Carter and Teal'c after the initial assessment of the trade goods, let a diplomatic team take over when half their team was recalled. Whatever issue Bra'tac had brought to the SGC, it didn't require Jack's attention, or Daniel's. Hammond had granted Daniel's request to stay, told him to use his best judgment in the negotiation.

Hammond hadn't authorized him to use _himself_. Goddammit.

" ... care that I don't accidentally waste my seed in infertile ground," Daniel was saying. It was remarkable how fast he could talk without raising his voice or projecting urgency to anyone around them. Jack heard the urgency loud and clear. He'd have liked to pretend that the explanation whooshed over his head, but there wasn't time for that kind of screwing around, and Daniel wouldn't fall for it anyway; he'd only get pissed and talk even faster. "But _you're_ supposed to care what I get up to, and they're making sure to respect your rights. If you're present, you have control over what I do and what you get out of it."

"What I ... " Jack answered the question in his head enough to realize that he didn't want to know but not in time to stop Daniel from telling him.

"They like to watch this kind of thing; it's a form of entertainment, on a par with our pornography, and they assume that you do too. Or if you're in a hurry to get this done and hit the road, if you're present you can make sure I don't dawdle or draw it out for my own pleasure." Daniel's face remained impassive, his voice matter-of-fact for all the rapidity of delivery. "Or maybe it will please you to let a favored possession have a little fun; that's OK with them as long as I blow my wad in the right hole. Or you can take me up the ass while I'm doing her. Or whatever else you want." His head tilted up a little. "There's more. Should I go on?"

There were a dozen things Jack wanted to say, and he didn't want to talk about this at all; for a moment he was silent, and then he said, "Do I get to turn my back if that's what I want?"

The tense irritation in Daniel's eyes changed to surprise, then a mixture of confusion and guarded sympathy. "No," he said. "The _int'ko'tisha'a_ , the girl, will report that, to protect herself. The transaction will become suspect."

"You can't sweet-talk her into bending the rules?"

"The attempt might scare her, or tick her off or hurt her feelings and make it harder on her, and it would have to be nonverbal or very carefully worded. These guys will all be right on the other side of the canvas. It doesn't seem worth the risk just to spare you ... whatever it would spare you." Daniel frowned, and started to say something, then didn't; Jack became aware of how they _should_ have been handling this, straight-up common-sense pragmatism. He was letting his discomfort stop him from doing what he could to make _Daniel_ comfortable with this, since after all it was Daniel who was going to be doing the deed in front of a teammate with a bunch of dirty old men eavesdropping two feet away, and --

It was Daniel's damned decision.

"Fuck," Jack whispered, frustrated and appalled and angry because he was guilty, because this was the one area where he had too much baggage to deal, because he was fucking up. "This is _nuts_."

"It's OK, Jack," Daniel said, oddly gently. "It's worth the stuff we're getting in return, they were negative for everything we can possibly screen for, we keep calling her a girl but she's twenty-two, she volunteered, a pregnancy from this will launch her into the highest caste and protect her and her family for the rest of their lives and let her marry the boy she likes, she'll get out of the match her father's been pushing for and rescue the boy from becoming a service male himself, and they really do need the DNA."

The medical staff had run every possible test in hope that a cure for the population's reproductive problems would be simple, but came up blank. Those who made it to adulthood in this cluster of villages were in perfect health, but one child in five was born hale and whole. Miscarriages, stillbirths, birth defects, infant mortality through the roof. If it was some kind of inbreeding issue, Daniel's splooge would be a drop in the bucket.

"Come on," Daniel said, when Jack was silent for too long. "I get laid. That's always a positive, right?"

He was giving Jack a stereotype to stand on. Jack knew he should take it, but he couldn't. He looked sharply at Daniel, and said, "I know you better than that."

Daniel relaxed, but it made him look tired. "OK. Then you know that I desperately don't want to do this the old-fashioned way and I'd vastly prefer to jerk off into a cup but that's not an option. You know that it's far from the first time I've done something I desperately didn't want to do. But it's my choice, not yours. The _int'ko'tisha'a_ 's clearly not enthused about it either, but you saw her step forward. You saw the elders question her, about whether she'd been pressured by her family, all that stuff. She volunteered. I volunteer. I want those tablets. Let's not prolong the discomfort for her any more, OK? It's looking like you're having second thoughts, and they'll blame it on her."

"You're sure," Jack said, his voice so low and hoarse it almost cracked. "You're fucking _sure_ about the STD thing."

"We can't be sure. I'm reasonably certain. I'm more worried about what I might give her than catch from her." When Jack's gaze snapped up to him, he produced a wry smile and said, "I'm clean, Jack. Had two sets of HIV tests and umpteen sets of everything else the infirmary could think of since the last time I had any sexual contact. Which means at least a year, to save you doing the math."

"I wasn't."

"You would have."

"Yeah. OK." Fuck. How could Daniel make him _smile_ when he was this pissed? He looked up again. "A _year_?"

Daniel shrugged, his mind obviously elsewhere. "It's the smallpox syndrome I'm worried about. I might be a carrier for something they have no immunity to. But then that's a concern in both directions with any kind of contact, right up to shaking hands, which we do all the time. I could do this and be fine and then scratch my nose and come down with who knows what. I'll take the risk."

"Don't scratch your nose. Daniel -- " Fear made his voice harsh. "Don't be the least bit rough with her. Don't let her dig her nails into you, don't -- "

"Jack. Stop."

Jack stopped, grinding his jaw.

"It's time to do this. OK?"

"Yeah. What happens now?"

"You turn and smile and nod at those guys over there. They'll form two lines to the door and usher us into the tent, you first. I don't know the interior setup. Bed and a chair of some kind, I guess, or pallet and pillows. We have an hour. That's partly for her protection, so we don't, ah, play with her too much." He nodded towards the elders, and Jack turned, and smiled the teeth-baring snarl-smile they didn't remember from the mists of their simian past, and nodded to them.

The men ushered them into the tent. It was lit only by sunshine filtering in through the canvas, and it took his eyes a couple of seconds to adjust even after he tugged off his shades, but there were unquestionably two stools and a pallet and someone lying on the pallet and someone else sitting on one of the stools.

"Daniel," he said, a slow warning drawl, when Daniel was inside.

"Um," Daniel said. He rattled off a sentence in their clicky, throaty, tongue-poppy language, and the person seated on the stool rattled something back. Daniel rattled, the other person rattled some more. The slight figure was resolving, in Jack's view, into a gray-haired, seamed-face elder, straight-backed and tight-jawed ... female. Her eyes were sharp and her expression was stony. She looked austere, authoritative. Fraiser's little sister would be bigger than she was. "Duenna," Daniel said. "Chaperone. Something like that. She's invoked some ancient privilege of her ... family line? House? It's unusual. She thinks we're going to argue it."

Jack looked hard at her. She was trying to buy time. For what?

For the girl who was lying on the pallet, nude under a milky neck-to-ankles cloth veil, arms and legs straight, fists clenched, tense as a wire.

Outside, she'd stood tall and proud, radiating determination and certainty.

Jack's fists clenched as tightly as hers. He took a couple of deep breaths. "She thinks you'll hurt the kid, Daniel. She's OK with the ... rite, whatever you call it, she wants the benefits, but -- Who does this usually happen with? Barbarians from the ass end of beyond or something?"

Daniel looked at him. "Yes. How ... ?"

Because there were all kinds of messages, and Jack was very good at interpreting the nonverbal ones. "An hour's a lot of playtime," he said, low and harsh. "If she can eat forty minutes debating technicalities, by the time we get her thrown out there won't be time for much more than the deed."

Daniel rattled some more, and the woman rattled back, angrily. Daniel tried to rattle reassuringly, and apparently failed. The woman's face went from defiant to pained. More rattling. Pain turned to pleading, then cycled through a brief flare of rage, quickly hidden, back to austerity.

Daniel rummaged in his pockets, came out with a protein bar and what might be a small orange. He slipped Jack the protein bar. Jack made an _oh, come on_ face at him. Daniel raised his eyebrows and shrugged: _It's worked before. Give it a try._

Jack went over to stand in front of the woman. He peeled the wrapper off the chocolate bar and offered it. The woman regarded it with the disbelieving contempt he'd expected.

"Right," Jack said. "Probably just insulted both of you." He wrapped a bandanna around the thing and shoved it in a jacket pocket, then rubbed his face, said "Screw this," and took a knee.

The woman looked startled. He swept his cap off. She squinted at him, wary but listening. "He won't hurt her, ma'am," he said. "I'm bettin' that you can read me as well as I can read you, and I give you my word that he will be a perfect gentleman with your girl there." Keeping his back to Daniel, he looked the woman in the eyes, pressed the scrunched cap to the left side of his chest with one hand, and gestured with the other thumb, across himself and back behind his right shoulder, to Daniel. Alternating thumb and index finger, punctuating with a thump of the hand over his heart, he tried to tell her that as precious as the young lady was to her, that's how precious Daniel was to him, and he was worried too. Her eyes narrowed and sharpened, and then she nodded. "OK?" he said, double-checking, triple-checking. "All right?"

She gestured at the girl with an open hand, as if presenting her for introduction. "Keshla," she said.

"Name?" Jack said quietly over his shoulder, and Daniel said yes, in a low voice, as the woman repeated, "Keshla," so Jack gestured and said, "Daniel," then gestured again and said, "Jack."

The woman put her hand on her chest and said, "Enkula."

"Enkula," Jack said. He was grateful that the names weren't too clicky-poppy for him to pronounce. He switched his cap to his left hand and offered his right. She hesitated, not understanding, then extended hers. He took it, clasped it. "This sucks for all of us, Enkula, but we'll get through it. OK?"

She clasped back, hard, with bony, callused fingers, and nodded, then withdrew her hand and gestured him over to the other stool. He dropped his cap, by accident, as he took it. Didn't bother picking it up.

Daniel stripped down, efficiently, not making a show of it. He turned toward Enkula and rattled something. After a surprised hesitation, she gave a brusque nod and rattled a word. "Permission," Daniel said, without looking at Jack. He grabbed the orange fruit from his jacket and knelt down beside the pallet, across from Jack and Enkula. "Keshla?" he said. After glancing at Enkula and getting a gentler nod in response, the girl nodded too. "Daniel," Daniel said, brushing his chest with his hand.

"Daniel," she repeated.

He smiled at her. He rattled some soft words. Her brows rose. He rattled some more and made an easygoing sit-up gesture. She sat up and scooched back, holding the veil over herself at the chest. He knee-walked onto the pallet; Jack thought he was going to sit down cross-legged in front of her, but he stayed kneeling, spreading his legs wide around her drawn-up feet. Then he offered her the fruit.

She hesitated, and then slipped a hand out from under the veil and took it. It was a tangerine, Jack thought, small and hard-looking, maybe not quite ripe. The girl sniffed it, and blinked in what looked like pleased surprise. Jack didn't know if she got the symbolism; she might not know that it carried seeds. But the nod of thanks she gave Daniel as she set it safely to the side beat the hell out of insulted scorn. This offering was accepted.

Looking down, Daniel took a deep breath, and released it for a ten count. Then he looked back up and smiled at the girl. When she gave a tentative smile back, he started touching himself.

Long, soft strokes over chest, belly, down his thighs. Playing with his nipples, playing with the soft package between his legs. Lifting it to display to her, then easing it down and stroking, petting, tugging, while his other hand brushed circles over his pecs, teased his nipples to hardness. Rattling soft words now and then.

Invitations, Jack thought. _This feels good. You wanna try? You can touch me. It's OK._

Or maybe, a suggestion to try it on herself.

She relaxed slowly, apparently so fascinated with what he was doing that she forgot to be uptight. She asked a question, and Daniel answered it. She asked another, he answered; it went back and forth for a while, with him stroking himself the whole time. Suddenly she looked at Enkula, a look of hopefulness and uncertainty: _Can I?_

Enkula nodded. In Jack's peripheral vision, she looked as awed as he felt. _Bet she doesn't have a boner the size of a populous Southeastern state, though_. He was trying to get some distance on it, but there was no way.

Daniel was beautiful. Stunningly beautiful, gentle and strong and male, and touching himself, with no self-consciousness, the way you touched yourself when you were masturbating, when there was no one watching, when you were lost in a dreamy fantasy about someone you wanted, maybe even someone you loved. Jack couldn't have torn his gaze away; at the same time, it was just at the edge of what he could handle.

 _As it were,_ he thought sourly. _So to speak._ It didn't help.

Keshla said something, softly, eyes lowered, and Daniel said, "No, no," and then something rattly. Hesitantly, self-consciously, she began to stroke herself through the soft, sheer fabric of the veil she was holding over the front of her body.

Jack looked away.

A few minutes passed. He'd pretty much memorized the wear in the weave of the canvas door, the little tilt of the entryway; he'd identified three problems with this tent that he could fix in about five minutes, and was seriously considering getting up to occupy himself with fixing them. He was startled when the girl spoke up, in a clear strong voice, and he almost jumped when Enkula's bony fingers tapped the top of his shoulder.

"Keshla says it's OK, Jack. You don't have to look away."

He took a breath, but he couldn't force his head around. "She's got Grandma, Daniel. Tell 'em I'm right here if you try somethin' you're not supposed to, just give a shout."

Daniel said, "It's OK with me too. Don't make yourself sick over it."

A tug on his jacket this time, from Enkula. He cast a blank look at her. She gestured at the jacket. Too hot in here for that, he understood, and then had the brilliant realization that if he took it off he could use it to cover his tented pants without drawing attention to their tentedness by covering them with his hands. Was that was Enkula meant? He got his vest off and the jacket draped across his lap, and then he was out of excuses to look away. He forced his head up, and around.

Daniel and the girl were on their butts, legs stretched forward, hers over his. She'd cast the veil off to the side. She was watching Daniel's face with a look of delighted affection. _You and me both, kid,_ Jack thought. One of her hands was on her own breast, forefinger stroking the nipple; the other hand was on Daniel's chest, thumb stroking one of his. Both of his hands were between his legs, barely moving. Slowly, she ran the hand on her breast down her belly and between her legs. Daniel lifted a hand and brushed the hand on him, lightly, and said something. She leaned forward, looking mesmerized, and stroked down the front of his body, and between his legs.

She gasped something, and Daniel laughed softly and said something that sounded wry. She asked a question, and he said something that sounded reassuring. It appeared to reassure her, anyway. But Jack could hear a tinge of something else in it. Worry?

She explored him for a while, forgetting herself. After a while, he gently reminded her. She flushed, and hesitated; she glanced at Enkula again and got a nod, and a smile this time -- Daniel had earned Grandma's approval, all right -- and she reached for Daniel's hands. He gave them to her. She put them on herself.

 _Get me out of here get me the **fuck** out of here **god** don't make me watch this._

He wanted to look at his wristwatch for a distraction, but it would distract them if he moved, and he didn't need the watch to know that twenty minutes had passed. He wanted to remind Daniel of the time, but they weren't on short time yet and Daniel was doing fine, right on schedule. Her posture was softening, her skin was flushing. She pushed Daniel's hands between her legs, and he gently disengaged, took her hands, put them back on her own breasts. Stroked her with them; let go, and when she took up the stroking on her own, reached down and delicately parted her lips with one hand. She gave a little gasp and said something Jack didn't need the language to know was _Oh. Yes_. Daniel's thumb moved gently down, wet itself in her, and stroked upward. Lubricating and stimulating, long strokes up each side, then up the center, then up each side again. Moving closer to her clitoris on each pass. His upper hand shifted to spread her more. She was starting to tremble, from what seemed to be uncontrolled arousal.

She came with a choked cry at the first brush of Daniel's slick thumb over her clit. Daniel got her by the shoulders before she bucked back too hard, moved in close and wrapped her up; she grabbed him around the neck as if she were drowning, wrapped her legs around him, buried her face in his neck. He murmured gently to her, half in English that Jack couldn't make out except for "OK, you're OK" before it turned into rattling again. He rocked her a little, stroked her, held her. She went slowly limp against him.

Quietly, not turning his head, Daniel said, "Jack, I can't get it up."

After a blink and a second of pure, stunned blankness, Jack said, "You are freakin' kidding me."

"No joke."

"That happen much?"

"No. But I don't have much sex with college-age virgins in front of their grandmothers and a teammate."

Jack cast desperately for something not-moronic to say. "You think it's the audience?"

"No." The answer was oddly definitive. Not firm as in _no I'm not letting it be_. Just ... bleakly certain.

"Maybe in the back of your head you're worried about hurting her."

"I didn't feel a hymen. I've never actually felt one, but there's nothing ... like that. Nothing to tear. Horseback riding, I suppose. Or they've pulled the wool over the village elders' eyes on the virginity issue."

"So you're good to go," Jack said, as gently and encouragingly as he could. "She's relaxed, she's into it, and I gotta tell ya, she's -- Wait, is that it? You can see she's crazy about you and you don't want to ... "

"I _don't_ want to," Daniel said. "But she's not crazy about me. She was amazed at how good all this felt and she's excited about what she'll be able to show the boy she likes. They're not allowed to have intercourse but they can play if Grandma's there. I told her a bunch of things she could do for him. I can't, apparently, show her."

"Well, hell. You -- ... Crap."

"What? Say it. She's out, she conked out, say whatever it is, I'm really ... I really ... "

Quietly, Jack said, "You have had sex since 873, right? This isn't ... "

"Some," Daniel said. "Not much. I haven't been suffering from erectile dysfunction or anything. And it doesn't feel like I'm betraying Sha'uri's memory, no. Jack ... "

"What?"

"I don't think I've ever felt less in the mood."

A slight hitch in Daniel's breathing before he spoke suggested to Jack that that wasn't what Daniel had started to say, but he didn't know what to do about that. "Focus on what you've got in your arms," he said.

"I know what I'm holding. I like her. She's smart. She's brave. I'm glad she came like that. _I cannot get it up._ "

Digging his fingers painfully into his thigh -- really hard, _really_ painfully -- Jack said, "Give her another present for her boyfriend. Fellatio 101."

"No."

Tightly, "I can't think of anything else, Daniel."

Enkula rattled something, suddenly.

Daniel tensed. Keshla stirred, woke, pushed back from him -- sleepy-eyed, sated, happy. She smiled at him, dazzlingly, then kissed his cheek and pushed out of his arms -- laying herself back, laying herself out. Legs spread. Arms spread. Jack's swallow was embarrassingly audible.

Daniel's posture hadn't changed.

Enkula rattled something else, more firmly. Keshla's eyes widened; her gaze dropped to Daniel's groin. Then it flicked to Jack.

 _Oh, fuck,_ Jack thought.

Enkula turned to him and said something.

"Don't translate that," Jack said, fast, sharp.

Daniel's eyes closed and his head went back the way it did when he was maintaining his composure through either anger or pain. Then he extricated his legs from Keshla's, stretched them out next to her, and lay down on his back. He said something quietly rattly. Keshla, wide-eyed but willing enough to give it a shot, said, "OK." It should have been funny. It should have been cute as hell, the way she picked up the term from them. Nothing was funny or cute right now.

"No," Jack said. "No, Daniel. You said no."

"Maybe it'll work," he said. Obviously trying to keep his voice light, but the misery singing through it.

"You don't want her sucking you, she's not sucking you. Nobody gets forced here, not even by circumstances."

"This is better than the alternative. Shut up now, Jack."

He rattled something to Keshla. She rattled, Grandma rattled; Daniel rattled with an edge to his voice, and they both capitulated, with a tinge of bemusement to it.

They thought his owner should take care of this problem.

They thought Jack should be doing this.

Jack would give his left nut to be doing this.

It was unfuckingbelievably fucked up. But Daniel would rather endure something he didn't want the girl to do than whatever Jack was supposed to do, and they _were_ on short time now, nineteen minutes to get this done, so fuck it, whatever worked for Daniel.

Except it didn't work. She licked him with care and enthusiasm and what looked like it might even thank christ be enjoyment and he didn't come up, although the sight was giving Jack's boner a boner. At Enkula's direction, she took Daniel's penis into her mouth and sucked, cautiously at first and then warming to it, making low sounds of interest and pleasure. Jack was pretty sure she wasn't faking it. Daniel didn't come up. Daniel cocked a leg out and reached down and cupped his balls, rolled them, swirled his thumb over his lower abs; Jack nearly burst the seams of his pants, but Daniel didn't come up. He said something low and a little harsh to Keshla that sounded like _suck hard, really hard_ , and she said what must have been _no I'll hurt you_ , and Daniel's tone of voice said _you won't, it's OK, just try_. She gave a good hard suck, wincing but trying; Daniel stopped her immediately with a grimace and a hand to her head.

Keshla sat back, hurt and bewildered.

Enkula looked at Jack, and didn't look away.

"I can't, Grandma," Jack said, when she wouldn't stop drilling him with her eyes, when she reached over and tugged on him again, hard this time. "He doesn't swing that way, it won't do any good, OK? It'll make it worse. It won't help. Crap -- dammit -- Daniel, would you tell her?"

"It would help," Daniel said, softly, to the ceiling of the tent. "I won't even consider it, because it would disgust you. But I won't lie to her. She's got my number."

"What?" Jack said weakly.

"Where do we stand on time here? There's one more thing I can think of but it's a really _really_ last resort."

"Twelve minutes. What did you just say?"

Daniel had sat up, and he was knee-walking over in front of Keshla. He squeezed her shoulder, assuring her that it wasn't her. She pointed at Jack and Daniel shook his head emphatically. Then he sat back on his heels and swore, in Farsi of all things. "How the fuck do I explain what a prostate is in this fucking language?" he said, so softly that Jack barely heard him.

"I'll take care of it," Jack said.

"You'll explain what a prostate is in this language you don't speak?"

Jack got up, back stiff from the cramped low stool, cock no longer stiff at all as _what the fuck am I doing_ chilled his intestines, and knelt down beside the pallet, meeting Daniel's what-the- _fuck_ stare levelly. "I know what a prostate is and I know where it is and what to do with it. Give me permission and I'll work on the front, too. We'll have you up in no time. Never leaves this tent. Deal?"

"Are you _kidding_ me?"

"Easy, buddy. It's not a problem from this side, OK?"

"It's obviously a problem. You should see your face. Now I know what the word 'ashen' means."

"You won't be looking at my face. Nine minutes, Daniel. Ancient tablets, launch these folks into the highest caste, avoid the repercussions of failure I know you didn't tell me about because you didn't trust me not to go busting heads out there. Unless they'll let me stand in for you and not tell anybody, but she's comfortable with you and I think we can agree that switching off would be a damned crappy thing to do." Daniel was only looking more stubborn and more pained, so Jack said, "C'mon, am I that awful? You said it would help. 'Even though I'm a man' or 'because I'm a man' doesn't matter. It's just me. You trust me with your body every other way."

"Jack ... it's ... I'll ... "

The back of Jack's head was screeching. He ignored it. His hands wouldn't give his private issues away. Daniel couldn't divine his forbidden desires through a finger up his ass. Just some manual aid. It wouldn't out him. Calmly, he said, "Eight minutes."

"God _damn_ it. I can't ... decide ... what's... "

"Decisions are my job. All I need is permission."

There was what felt like a long pause. Then Daniel said, "Jack, listen to me."

"There's no time for -- "

"You have my permission if you still want it after I tell you this, but listen. You don't have to -- Just the front will work. You touching me that way is something I've wanted since I met you. You shouldn't touch me without knowing that. I can't accept it unless you know that."

"You ... What?"

"Don't make me say all that again. This is humiliating enough. Make your command decision. It's OK to change your mind. I know I'm not -- ... Just decide."

In a clear, strong, angry voice, Keshla said, "No."

Daniel stared at her. So did Jack.

So did Enkula. Keshla gestured something very complicated and angry to her grandmother, and Enkula gestured back, very firmly, for her to stay put and get on with it. Daniel asked a question in a clicky, poppy whisper that made Jack's throat hurt to listen to. Keshla whispered back, almost too low for Jack to hear, definitely too low for the eavesdroppers to hear.

Tone soft and high with amazement, Daniel said, "She says it's become clear that I'm being forced, and she won't be party to that."

Jack scrubbed his hands through his hair, hard.

"She says she always suspected the received wisdom about men being ... indiscriminately randy was a load of bull." He whispered something to her, and she pointed at his limp dick and stared him straight in the eyes, an obvious retort. He whispered something else -- reminding her of the rise in caste, Jack thought, the benefits if she got pregnant and bore a healthy child -- and she leaned in and spoke at length into his ear.

"She says she needs this. She wants this very badly. She worked very hard for this. She chose this, and she was extremely fortunate that it was the right time in her cycle. She rejoiced. Her family rejoiced. But she won't let me be forced. Her friends have been forced. Enkula was forced. It's wrong. She refuses to continue as long as I'm, ah. Yeah." Daniel twisted his head a little more over his shoulder but didn't turn to look full-on at Jack. "So it's OK, Jack. It's on her now, not you. It's ... out of your hands, literally."

Jack said, "As long as you're."

"Yeah," Daniel said again. His hands drifted to his genitals, to cover them, Jack thought. The first time he'd shown the remotest discomfort about his own nakedness.

"So, you get wood, the show's back on, right?"

"Well, I guess," Daniel said, looking at Keshla, who was watching the exchange between them intently, reading body language and facial cues, "but it's ... a pretty moot ... What are you doing?"

Jack had grabbed Daniel's tac vest and was digging out the little tube of petroleum jelly he slathered on his lips to keep repeated wormhole transits from chapping them. "Bend over. I can't reach from this angle."

"I told you, she -- "

"You told me that a prostate massage from me specifically will do the trick. You told me you want me to touch you sexually. If I tell you it's mutual, it's always been mutual except 'mutual' implies I knew how you felt, am I copping a feel? Taking advantage?"

Daniel went completely still. "No. But that would be too ... "

"Ironic. No shit. It's mutual. Bend over."

"It's ... "

"Mutual. Mutual sexual attraction. We're at five minutes here." Jack waited, kneeling, poised with two fingers loaded with jelly.

Pale and stunned, Daniel dropped to his hands. Jack laid his dry hand on Daniel's back, balance and connection and reassurance; Daniel was the one shaking now.

Yeah, actually, not the only one. "I can't go slow," Jack said. "No time."

"It's OK. It's OK."

Jack stroked jelly up the crack and around the hole. He reached under with his other hand, and found Daniel firming fast. Still holding him underneath, he pushed one finger in, nowhere near as careful as he wanted to be, and twisted it around, and pushed a little more and found the nub of the gland. Daniel went rock-hard in his palm.

"Keep it in," Daniel said, somewhere between a straight instruction and a plea.

"OK," Jack said.

"Show her I'm -- " Daniel choked, or lost his breath; swallowed, and said, "Show her I'm hard. Show both of them."

Brain screeching again, Jack shifted his grip on Daniel's package to display the erection. Enkula gave it a quick, nearly dismissive assessment that under any other _less completely insane_ circumstances would have made Jack laugh, or at least roll his eyes, since the formidable hard-on in his hand was not something _he'd_ dismiss lightly. Keshla gave it a once-over, suspicion becoming curiosity becoming uncertainty. She looked to Enkula, got a shrugging nod, searched Daniel's eyes, considered. Then she said something nearly inaudible that must have meant that if Daniel was OK with this, so was she. Daniel whispered to her at length. She shot a hard glance at Jack, who tried to look as unlordly and unownerly and unforcey as he possibly could with one finger up a buddy's ass; checked between Daniel's legs one last time; and said, in English, "OK. Yes."

Daniel slid his knees back and lowered himself down. Keshla wriggled into place underneath him. When Jack's knee came within her reach, she gave it a reassuring rub. It surprised him more than soothed him, but he managed a nod. He drew his left hand out from between them and followed Daniel's motion with his right, just keeping the finger in him. The inside of Daniel's body was a hot sweetness that he couldn't let himself appreciate, a sensation he logged for later; the weight of Daniel in his palm was already a memory. He was aware in a detached way that this was one of the more surreal experiences in a life that had boasted some supremely weird shit. His gaze locked on Daniel's tailbone as he determined to give them whatever privacy he could; his peripheral vision took in the girl's expression of concentration, and Daniel's steadying grip on her shoulder; through his finger he felt the minute shifts as Daniel felt his way into position. When Daniel's focus went into what he was doing with his dick, his rectal muscles relaxed, and Jack sank in farther without meaning to. Keshla's hand closed over his knee and squeezed and he remembered what he'd told Daniel about nails digging in and thought _Yeah, better me with my thick BDUs_ ... then there was a slow surge of muscle, a beautiful unmistakable slow surge forward, and nails gouged the heavy cotton over his thigh and Daniel's ass contracted around his finger and Keshla made a sound of overwhelmed _oh thank god it doesn't hurt_ relief.

Daniel worked himself back and forth, with exquisite care, between Keshla and Jack's finger. He was watching Keshla's face. Jack pushed a little more, gave him a little more to fuck himself on. Daniel started thrusting a little deeper each time, slow and careful but working his way as far in as he could to give this one shot the best possible chance. On the deepest push, Keshla let out a deep groan, and Jack thought he heard a murmur from the gathered elders outside. He hoped Daniel and Keshla hadn't noticed. He couldn't see Enkula. Daniel's body arched at whatever he was feeling inside her, and his cheek pressed against hers, and he said, "Jack. More. Help me come." Then his head dropped all the way, and his hips circled, pressing firm and gentle stimulation into her clitoris. She came with a series of hitching cries, her fingers splayed wide on Jack's thigh.

Jack gave a deep, slow rub over the gland. Daniel froze, said "Jack, oh, god" into the spread of Keshla's hair, and clenched on Jack's finger. He shook silently for almost ten seconds.

Jack looked up, while Daniel orgasmed on his finger, and found Keshla looking down at him. She smiled, dreamy, triumphant, relieved, grateful. Her hand -- he didn't remember it relaxing -- patted his knee.

When Daniel stopped shaking, Jack withdrew carefully. He cleaned his fingers with a wetnap while Daniel withdrew from Keshla, just as carefully, and laid a soft kiss on her cheek as he pushed up, got his knees under him. He lifted her legs, bent at the knee, and pressed them toward her chest, rattled something that must have been _grab hold_ , and maybe _roll your lower back_ if he knew how to say that. She was already doing it.

Wincing away from the memory of doing this with his wife, Jack grabbed a spare pillow and asked Daniel to help him get it under her. Enkula came over waving them off, and finished seating it.

"She should hold that position for a while," Jack said, backing away to get Daniel a cloth to wipe up with. "Is that gonna count somehow? 'Cause we're at zero on the clock here."

Daniel rattled to Enkula and Enkula rattled back. Daniel said, "No, they're good, they can stay in here, we just have to go now. They both say thanks." He swayed, getting to his feet. Jack helped him up, held him steady while he cleaned up and got his briefs on. While Daniel pushed into his pants, Jack looked back at the two women, but neither of them looked up at him; they were only interested in each other now, talking in low tones about whatever came next for them. They'd said goodbye-and-thanks and that was it.

Outside, a male voice called time very loudly. Daniel was barely half dressed. Jack grabbed Daniel's vest and his own vest and jacket and cap and hustled Daniel and his armful of boots and clothes out the front of the tent.

The glare of daylight was painful. Jack shoved his shades over his eyes and flipped on his cap, then found Daniel's clip-ons in his vest and had them ready to hand to him when he had his socks and boots and T-shirt on. Gave him a hand up, helped him on with the jacket and vest. A few guys were coming over and a few guys were running off somewhere, he supposed to get the tablets. He stood by Daniel while he and the coming-over guys rattled back and forth to each other.

They got their box of stuff, checked through it, formally accepted it, and went back to the gate and through to Earth.

They reported the sexual activity, and Daniel spent the next two hours in the infirmary. After twenty very unpleasant minutes in Hammond's office, Jack waited in his own office, then in Daniel's lab, playing FreeCell on Daniel's computer. Half an hour after the page he'd requested came through letting him know that Daniel had been released, Daniel came into the lab with wet hair and smelling like base soap and wearing his street clothes.

"I went by your office," Daniel said. "Thought you'd left."

"Waiting for you." After a second of silence, Jack got up, gestured to Daniel's chair.

"No, I'll write it up tomorrow," Daniel said. "I just want to get out of here."

"Want company?"

"Yeah. And takeout."

"You got it. I have to change. Meet you topside?"

"I'll go pick up the food, save some time." Daniel hesitated then, for the first time since coming in. "Your house?"

"Wherever you want. You've got my keys."

"Your house."

When he got to his house, Daniel wasn't there. He went into the kitchen and popped a beer. Stood contemplating the magnetic calendar on the fridge, all the blank days of his surface life. After a few minutes, he heard the sound of the Jeep pulling up. He popped another beer. Daniel let himself in and came around to put the takeout bags on the kitchen island. "Line at the Szechuan place," he said. Jack reached a beer out to him. Daniel took that beer, and the one in Jack's right hand, and set them next to the takeout bags. "Were you serious? What you said?"

"About the mutual thing?"

"Yeah."

"Very serious."

"How secure is this house?"

"Very secure."

Daniel stepped up to him, close. "Are we talking about wish-we-could-but-I'm-military mutual or feelings-and-stuff mutual or just-fucking mutual?"

Heart racing because Daniel-in-his-face was very different from Daniel-at-an-angle-and-under-pressure, Jack said softly, "Everything-but-the-first-one mutual. However-you-want-things-to-be mutual."

Daniel took his mouth and a handful of his pullover at the same time. He kissed in a slow, gentle surge, warm full lips and knowing, experienced tongue. Jack opened to it, received it in a rush of wonder, kissing back, a little, but mostly just letting, just feeling. Daniel's left arm came around him, pulled their bodies together. At the full-body contact, his mouth went tender, and he moaned into Jack's mouth. Then the kiss got very deep and very hot and very sexual, and Jack got a hand on Daniel's ass and Daniel turned them and pushed Jack against the island and ground against him, the sultry grinding circles of his hips that Jack had felt from the other side, and there was no problem for Daniel getting it up this time, this was insta-erection, this was Daniel when he wanted it. Jack was slower rising to it but once he had he was so hard it ached after the unrelieved hour offworld. He gasped out of the kiss when it got to be too much, tried to say "Wait" but wound up gasping "Wuh" because he didn't mean _stop_ , he just --

Daniel pushed back enough to get at Jack's belt and fly. His eyes were alight and he was smiling, that smile that _killed_ Jack, insolence and amusement and daring. "How's my mouth strike you as an alternative to creaming your shorts?" he said, impossibly articulate, impossibly dextrous in opening Jack's pants, and all Jack could manage by way of reply was a long, breathy "Fuuuuuck," and by then Daniel was halfway to his knees.

He came before he'd felt even a fraction of what Daniel's mouth was capable of. It was too sweet, too hot, too fast, too good; he erupted with a high, helpless sound, white-knuckling the counter. Daniel sucked and swallowed, sucked and swallowed; he could feel Daniel's _throat_ , feel his tongue moving back and forth, and he came even harder or came again, he couldn't tell -- it was Daniel, _Daniel_ , and for a few blind seconds it felt as though he'd come forever.

The crest of it passed, finally, but at the point where he was usually done, he wasn't; it kept feeling good, it felt even sweeter because it wasn't so intense that he couldn't feel himself feeling. He didn't want it to end, but he didn't want Daniel to think he had to keep ...

"Daniel," he breathed, looking down, reaching to touch Daniel's head.

Daniel's eyes were softly closed. His lips around Jack's shaft looked beautiful; Daniel looked beautiful; Jack had never seen anyone look anything but drowning-fish when they blew him, and Daniel looked _beautiful_.

"Daniel," he said again, lightly touching his hair, wanting to run fingers through it and not knowing if he was allowed.

Daniel drew off him slowly and looked up, a shock of blue eyes over the top of his glasses. "I'm not finished here," he said, and closed his mouth over Jack's glans, and tenderly sucked, running a looped thumb-and-forefinger through the come and spit slicking Jack's shaft, light and fast, back and forth.

" _Fuck_ ," Jack said again, his head going back, another round of spasms running up through his balls and along his shaft and out to the sensitive tip, where Daniel was softly sucking. "Daniel," he moaned. " _Daniel_."

"Mmmm," Daniel hummed back, the vibrations running down the length of him and stimulating a last twitch from his spent package. Daniel still didn't pull off; he bobbed gently, then stilled, his tongue softly swirling and stroking. He stayed there, warm wet mouth a comfortable sweetness, for the two or three minutes it took Jack to soften. Then he sat back on his heels and took a long look at what he'd been sucking on, combing gently through the damp hair around it. "You know you can stroke my head if you want to," he said. "You can stroke any part of me anytime you want to."

"OK," Jack said, a soft croak, and cleared his throat.

"Do you get oversensitive afterwards?" Daniel asked, glancing up again.

"No," Jack said. "You can still touch, if you want to."

Daniel stroked the backs of his fingers down Jack's penis, then up under his balls. Jack let out another breath, his eyes closing; the light, cool touch felt incredibly good. Daniel did it again, a couple of times, more gently each time; then he dropped a kiss on the middle of the shaft and pushed to his feet and wrapped around Jack, sighing into his neck. Jack put arms around him, a little gingerly, not wanting the rough front of Daniel's dungarees against the soft, spent front of himself. Daniel kept his hips cocked away. After a minute, he pushed the rest of himself back. "I don't know if I can do those up from this side," he said. "You better do it."

Jack reached down to pull and tuck and button and buckle. Daniel reached around him for the nearest beer, took a long swallow, then offered it to Jack. Jack took a pull and handed it back and said, "So?"

"So?" Daniel echoed, cocking his head. "So, now we're even?"

"That's all that was?"

"No, that was me getting something I've wanted for five years, and you getting some relief after that hour I finally realized after we got back must have been acutely uncomfortable. Food now?"

"I think what I meant was can I return the ... " He made a 'gesture' gesture.

"I'm OK," Daniel said with a shrug, and started pulling the containers out of the bags.

"Do you have a thing about receiving oral sex?"

"Why would you ... Oh. No, not usually. I'm just really hungry. Can we do the sexual quiz after dinner?"

Jack wasn't sure what was happening here, but he let it go. He was hungry too, and although he'd rather have sacked out somewhere soft and flat with Daniel in his arms, he had no idea whether Daniel would be receptive to cuddling in general, and there was something else going on here, so just going with the flow seemed the best course.

It wasn't nervous hyperness; Daniel ate the way he always ate after a mission, piling food into himself to make up for everything he was too excited and distracted to eat while they were working. He was a binge worker, a binge eater, a binge sleeper; he'd stay up and work and starve himself for thirty hours, then pig out and crash for twelve or fourteen. It seemed like a good way to stress your body into an early grave, but it was Daniel's MO and Jack didn't bug him about it too much. He couldn't help wondering now if sex was a binge thing with him too. Sounded like he had a lot of near-celibacy to make up for. Jack wasn't averse to reaping the benefits, but it struck him with a performance anxiety he didn't usually feel, and he had other issues, experience issues, to deal with, and that worried him and put him off his food. He didn't know if he'd be able to provide --

Suddenly he understood what was up with Daniel. "I know dinner's not over yet," he said, sitting across the dining table from him, both of them eating out of the containers, silent up to this point, just eating and swigging from the second round of beers. "But I want you to know that this isn't just an infatuation, with me. It's OK, you know, wherever you're coming from on this, whatever you want, you tell me to back off and I back off, but I'm up for a lot more than a quick thing."

Daniel finished chewing and swallowing the last bite he'd taken, then poked around in his container with the chopsticks. "You can't afford even a quick thing," he said. "I'm kind of waiting for that to hit home, I guess."

Jack considered that for a minute, then said, "You think I haven't run every possible scenario, extrapolated every possible way this could work if you only returned those feelings?"

"You didn't think I did. That was daydreaming. This is real. This is forced retirement, scandal hobbling the program, betrayal of the team, people who love you turning their backs. For real."

"I'm aware of all that. I have very realistic daydreams."

"Really?"

"Really."

"Huh." Daniel was down to the dregs of his carton, stabbing up water chestnuts and wiping them off on the edge of the container so they fell back in. He got picky when he started to get full. "OK." He put the carton on the table, sat back and looked up. "So?"

"So, I'm still eating here," Jack said, smiling, with his mouth full.

Daniel reached across for the last shrimp roll and said, "I've given a lot of handjobs, blowjobs."

Half a noodle went up Jack's nose from the inside. He sucked it back down, swallowed, and said, "You don't say."

To the shrimp roll, Daniel said, "I mostly had boyfriends in college and grad school. On again, off again. I tended to kind of forget about them when I got busy with work, and they'd drift away. Sometimes they'd drift back." He crunched off a bite of shrimp roll, chewed. "I didn't really think about it that much. It was just sort of ... there, and when it wasn't I had my mind on other things anyway." He shrugged, and washed the mouthful down with some beer, and said, "But no penetrative sex, beyond a couple of fingers."

 _Eating here!_ Jack thought, but what he said was "Apparently we're not waiting 'til after dinner for the quiz anymore."

"I'm preempting the quiz by just telling you." Daniel was in grazing mode now, picking a string of beef out of one carton, a vegetable out of another. He'd keep doing that until he was so full he was groaning, then complain that he didn't know why he ate so much.

Jack plucked the remaining cartons up, set them out of reach, and pushed one of the dessert containers at him. It'd be perfectly melted now, soupy around a core chunk of coconut ice cream, just the way Daniel liked it. "You're tellin' me you're gonna kind of forget about me? This is the 'I don't do commitment' warning?"

"No," Daniel said, looking surprised. "I'm not telling you anything. I'm just telling you."

Ordinarily this was the kind of conversation that Jack would suffer with ill-concealed discomfort or nip in the bud with a few terse responses, but he was actually pretty interested. "OK," he said. "So, there were girlfriends too, right?"

"A couple, early on. They didn't do so well with me kind of forgetting about them. And there was Sarah. She had a crush on my work, and ... I don't know, I'd say pushed her way in to being a girlfriend except it didn't take much pushing. I took things as they came along. Sha'uri was the first time I felt any sense of responsibility to the person I was with. But I did the same thing to both of them. Got lost in my work. By the time you guys showed up on Abydos again, I was spending a lot of time with the cartouche." He shoved his spoonful of ice cream back into the container without having tasted it. "I probably will do the same thing to you. I can't imagine how, right now, since our work is essentially the same. But maybe this was a warning after all."

Jack was finished eating. He dropped the chopsticks in the empty carton and picked up his beer. "I'm just something that came along and you're taking it?"

Daniel frowned into the ice cream, pushed some coconut slush around in a circle with his spoon. "Not at all. I've wanted you since I met you. I've done everything I could think of to stop wanting you. I've never ... That's a new thing, for me. So maybe it is different."

"There ya go." Jack swung his beer bottle toward the ice cream. "Now eat that and let me talk, because I'm only gonna say this once." Daniel opened his mouth -- no spoon anywhere near it -- and Jack said, "I know I don't have to. Eat."

Blinking, brows slightly raised, Daniel scooped a drippy spoonful into his mouth, and for a minute Jack just looked at him, and smiled, because he was so damned endearing, and sometimes he knew that perfectly well and used it without compunction, and sometimes he was completely oblivious of it, and this was one of the oblivious times, which made it even more charming. Jack had spent a lot of time not appreciating that, not noticing that, not thinking about that. It was better than the sweetest dessert, being able to look.

Then he said "OK," before his staring made Daniel aware of what he was staring at and killed it. "Minnesota, nineteen-sixties, conservative family equals no hanky-panky under the bleachers with any of the guys after practice. Knew I was interested, knew a couple of them were interested, knew it was off limits, end of story. I liked girls too, but ... fact is I was a little shy, they mostly approached me, that selected for the confident, competitive ones, I didn't want to be tied down, that didn't sit well with them, it all kept ending in tears. So as I got older I looked for women who'd be cool with keeping it casual. I also started doing the mutual-relief thing with men I was stationed with overseas. Same as you, from the sound of it, except I didn't much like giving head so it was mostly handjobs, occasionally some fingers up the ass. It worked for me. It took the edge off so I could go on dates and have a good time and not let my dick pull me into anything heavy where somebody would get hurt. Ten years of that and I met Sara. We surprised each other. Both thought we wanted casual, next thing we know it's wedding bells and married housing and a kid on the way. She knew I swung both ways -- she was OK with it, said she figured she knew how things worked downrange but if I ever brought an STD home I'd wish I'd never been born -- but I just stopped being interested. Felt the zing sometimes, noticed the attraction, didn't care. After Abydos, after I came back and she was gone and I packed in the service, no interest in women, but I did a few men -- bar pickups, late-night cruising, that kind of thing. Not often, because the scene turned my stomach. Enough to get by. Then whoosh, I'm reactivated, no more hanky-panky in Cheesman Park. After a few months I started seeing women again. As casual as it gets. Depressing, once I knew I wasn't getting over you. Increasingly occasional. But now and then, when something came along. Past year or so I've been using an escort service. That works a little better. Nobody gets hurt that way, nobody gets let down, and the price of an orgasm isn't the crap that goes through my head when I'm alone with myself." He shrugged and drained his beer.

Daniel was scraping the spoon around in the empty container, digging patterns in the Styrofoam. He smiled, suddenly, sweetly, eyes still lowered, and with a small shake of the head said, "You were shy."

"I _am_ shy. Outside the job. I'm a shy guy. You never noticed that?"

"Maybe I did. A little. I don't know. I guess I've just always ... I guess the way I got to know you, I never saw that. Except, looking back, I think it was there. The way you were that first night I was here, back on Earth, after ... Yeah. I just ... had other things on my mind, typical me I guess, and I was trying _not_ to notice, trying not to fall for you again, not to expect anything ... and then we were friends, sort of, hanging out anyway, and you were comfortable with me and it wasn't a factor anymore. You know I've never actually seen you at a party?"

"I play host well enough when I have to. Make cocktail-party chitchat when I have to. Comes with the uniform. It's a skill. I had to learn it." He smiled, shaking his head. "If either of us were any different we wouldn't be sitting here right now."

"We'd be lying in your bed catching our breath after boffing our brains out?"

Jack laughed out loud. "Maybe. What I mean is, somebody would have made a move a long time ago, taken the shot."

"Instead of the big mutual admission being under the most insanely weirdass circumstances possible. Yeah. Good point."

Abruptly Jack could feel the baking sun, the stifling tent, smell the canvas and the animals. He remembered the murmur than ran through the elders, beyond the tent walls, when Keshla made a sound of mature sexual pleasure. He hesitated, looked down, fiddled with a plastic fork. "You think the kid's OK?"

"She'll be OK for a while. Treated like a queen, supposedly. I'm more concerned about how many young people like her in that society are not OK at all. Her friends who were forced. The other women of her grandmother's generation, her mother's. The boys who are sold into sexual service. What we experienced was only the tip of the social-issues iceberg. I feel like ... " He sighed, harshly. "Never mind."

"You feel like there should have been more we could do."

"Yes, and I'm uncomfortable with the mercenary aspect of what I did. It was a fair trade, I don't feel I prostituted myself, I don't have hangups about, you know, offspring I'm not going to be involved with, I stand by my decision and my actions, but ... I don't know. Maybe what's bugging me is that they should have held out for more. They should have negotiated for a hundred sperm donors. A thousand. A week with every one of them, to be sure of conception."

"You couldn't have delivered that even if you thought the tablets were worth it."

"I know. I know they pooh-poohed the offer of medical help. I know they didn't want to hear what we had to say about crop rotation and irrigation. I don't blame them. They've farmed the way they farm for a thousand years, and who the hell are we? I don't blame them for being focused on the immediate problem."

"You said yourself that the gate is their best resource in a declining climate. If they listen to the follow-up teams, then that's how it'll pay off."

"I know. But their detente with the nomadic clans, the ... "

"Barbarians from the ass end of beyond?"

Daniel nodded. "It's based on the villagers' proximity to the gate and the secret of how to operate the DHD. That and the supply of food and boys they can't provide anymore."

"We can't save everyone, Daniel."

"We should."

"I know." Shifting the subject, and because he wanted to know, he said, "What if Keshla's not pregnant?"

"Her life goes back to the way it was. Her boyfriend goes into service, hopefully to someone from one of the villages and not an abusive clan lord. She marries whoever she's supposed to and prays for healthy babies."

"At least the Goa'uld aren't messing with them."

"Yeah. At least there's that."

There'd be follow-ups by other teams. More offers of humanitarian aid. Maybe they'd take them. If Keshla delivered a healthy child, there'd be another set of tablets. Somebody from the SGC would check back with them in a year or so, to find out.

They sat in silence for a while, picking at the detritus of the meal. Then Daniel started stuffing empty cartons into each other. Jack started dumping the leftover rice into the leftover entree containers, and said, "Can I ask you a couple of things? Personal things?"

"Of course," Daniel said.

"You said a year," Jack said, and then faltered, as it caught up with him that maybe he was being a real schmuck for wanting to ask what he was about to ask.

"Nobody on base," Daniel said, and picked up his stack of cartons, snagging the empty beer bottles in his other hand. "Just occasional things in town." He took the cartons out to the kitchen. Jack followed with the leftovers. "People I met at exhibits or the library. Women. This is a horrifyingly gay-unfriendly town. I've been approached by a couple of men, but I said no because I was trying to get over you and I didn't think sleeping with other men would help. One time I almost said yes because I was feeling particularly put out with the military, but it would have been a pathetic little rebellion and hurt nobody but me, so I passed. That was when I just started passing, actually, on anything that came along."

Piling the leftovers into the fridge without bothering to transfer them to Tupperware, Jack said, "Put out with the military, or with me?"

"The military. It pisses me off regularly. You piss me off regularly too, but not the same way, and it always passes. Did I answer your question?"

"Yeah. I never, you know, saw any sign that you were dating, but then I figured ... "

"Well, I never saw any sign that you were using an escort service. It's probably another missed clue, the fact that we never told each other stuff like that." Daniel leaned against the counter by the trash can where he'd dumped the takeout debris. "I mean, a buddy would have slipped me a card for that service at some point. If he thought I wasn't dating much."

"I couldn't go anywhere near that, Daniel. I couldn't even be _curious_."

"So we're back where we started. In the same room, in fact."

Jack could feel the heat filling the space between them. "You say the word and I'm on my knees." He gave a deliberately charming smile. "Marriage proposal or blowjob, your call."

"I think we've been pretty married for a while now," Daniel said. His package was firming in his dungarees, and his eyes were running slowly down Jack's body. "But you don't like giving head." His lips curved, just slightly, with irony: "Nobody gets forced here. Not even by love."

Jack stepped closer. "I didn't much like getting head, either, twenty years ago from guys who were just helping me out." He reached up under Daniel's shirt, for Daniel's belt. "I loved getting it from you. And believe me, I'm gonna love giving it to you."

"We could move this inside," Daniel said. The unbuckled belt flopped loose and Jack started on the button of his pants. Daniel belly contracted at the brush of Jack's fingers. The button popped, and Daniel swallowed. "I don't think your knees are gonna love it."

"Knees are fine," Jack said, and it was true since the last surgery, would be true for a year or so until he needed the next one, but it was also the last thing in the world he gave a crap about right now. He unzipped the dungarees and looked up into Daniel's eyes. "How about we just go for the reciprocity here and work out the rest in bed later?" He squeezed along the length of hardness settled comfortably in the crease of denim, and watched the creases that made around Daniel's eyes, the way it made his lips part, the soft _huh_ it pushed out of him. "I still haven't had dessert yet."

"Most important meal of the day," Daniel murmured vaguely, and let Jack turn him, push his dungarees down far enough to fall to the floor of their own weight, pull his briefs off his hips, get a hand towel folded between his back and the counter edge.

Jack went to one knee in front of him and unbuttoned the bottom three buttons of Daniel's shirt. Daniel took over at the fourth one, and he watched it come open, watched Daniel spread it back and out of the way. He ran his gaze over the whole bare expanse of him, then his fingers; then did it again, the way Daniel had done it on the planet, remembering the light swirling touch over breastbone and nipples, the long straight strokes up the abs, starting lower each time until they were groin-to-navel, then the small circles right above the pubic hair, spiraling softly downwards.

"You _were_ watching," Daniel said -- a little quaver in the middle of the word 'watching' as Jack's fingers did something especially right.

"This part," Jack said, and kept one hand warmly splayed on Daniel's lower abs while he ran the fingers of the other down the shaft of Daniel's penis in long, light pulls, ending right at the lip of the glans, not touching the head. It was a smooth, heavy dick -- the memory of the brief heaviness of it in his hand warmed into the feel of it under the pads of his fingers now -- and he'd thought it wouldn't come up much past the forty-five-degree angle it fell to when he'd pushed the briefs down, but it was lifting itself now, going really rigidly hard under his touch ... rising toward his mouth, which was literally watering, filling with spit he had to swallow because it was too much for him to even open his mouth. He kissed the head, very softly, just a press of lips against the tender skin, and from what felt like very far above him now he heard Daniel say "Oh my god," and he realized he'd closed his eyes, was just resting his lips there, feeling him, breathing him.

"Sorry," he said softly, drawing back, looking up. "Didn't mean to ... " Get carried away. Tease. Do something embarrassing. He didn't know what he meant.

"It's OK," Daniel said, breathless and dreamy at the same time, "it's perfect, it's ... "

His pupils were dilated and a flush was spreading across the pale skin of his chest, darkening and thickening his nipples. His abs fluttered under Jack's hand, and Jack squeezed a little, appreciating the delicious softness of belly with that quiver of arousal in the toned muscle under it, and Daniel made a soft trying-to-keep-the-sound-down sound. "It's OK," Jack said, and closed three fingers on the shaft to keep it still while he stroked his lips over the sweetly soft skin. "You can make noise. The place is secure. Just try not to shout." He heard Daniel's soft "OK" and then a clear, helpless _"Oh"_ as he took the head gently into his mouth.

 _Man, I hope this is shoutworthy,_ he thought.

He'd never done this gently. He hadn't done this much at all, only enough to know that it was one more way in which he wasn't wired to kneel, but it was always tight and hard, all of them looking for the most intense stimulation they could get, looking to get off fast, get it done, walk away. Now he sucked tenderly, losing himself in it. Smooth soft skin, blood-swollen hardness underneath it. The exquisite turn-on of being gentle with someone he loved. He couldn't look up well enough to see Daniel's face from this position, so he put the other knee down and moved in closer and sank down onto his calves. The new angle was so much better that most of the shaft just slid right down into him, filling his mouth, caressing his tongue, touching his throat, and he moaned, low and long, and his eyes slid shut in pleasure.

He had _Daniel's penis_ in his _mouth_. He'd dreamed about this, literally dreamed about it in his sleep and woken strung out with need. He had Daniel's pleasure on his tongue, under his lips, the most sensitive and arousable part of Daniel's body except for his brain. If not for wanting Daniel to come he felt like he could stay like this forever, moving gently back and forth, taking it a little deeper on every second or third pass. Someday, not today, he'd be able to get the whole thing down inside him, keep it there while it shot. His mouth watered some more at the thought. He'd been starving for this so long that having it only made him hungrier.

He pulled the briefs down past Daniel's knees so he could stroke his thighs the way Daniel had done for himself. Down the long hard quads, then up the soft insides, up to his balls. His legs were held too close together by the elastic, should have gotten him out of all that first, but he could get enough scrotum to roll it the way he'd seen Daniel do when he was trying to get himself hard, stroke his thumb in circles the way Daniel had. Daniel made another noise, a low breathy whine. Jack opened his eyes and looked up.

Daniel looked postcoital already, flushed and dazed, but he'd been watching intently. "You don't hate this," he said, his gaze searching.

Jack couldn't smile with his mouth full of dick, but he supposed his eyes must have smiled, because Daniel smiled back a little, in relief and pleasure, and the smile got bigger at the definitive " _Ng_ -ng" Jack managed by pulling back enough to free his throat.

"It's good," Daniel said, reaching to stroke his ear, palm it; reaching the other hand down too, cupping Jack's head. Not to control him, just to touch him. "It's so good, Jack."

Jack moved a little more, gradually, working up to long sucking pulls, watching Daniel's face. Watching his mouth fall open, his eyes glaze.

"Good," Daniel said, in a sweet, boyish voice, "good, good ... oh my god, so good ... "

Jack sped it up a little more, found a pattern, two fast slick wet bobs of his head and a long tight pull. Daniel started to shake. The rhythm and the taste and texture and Daniel's response had him so turned on that if he'd had a free hand he'd have brought himself off while he was doing it, but he didn't want to stop touching Daniel's balls, he didn't want to let go of the base of the shaft. He spread his legs, trying to rub against his pants, anything to feel some pressure there. He felt Daniel's cock contract down into itself, and he knew before Daniel's choked-out warning sound that he was going to shoot.

This was where he'd always bailed, pulling off fast and getting the hell out of the line of fire. Now, instead of bailing, he bore down. Took as much of it in as he thought wouldn't choke him when it went off, and sucked, and held. Looking up, and watching Daniel.

He'd heard him come before, heard the stifled grunt from the next sleeping bag, the gasp the sound of the shower didn't quite cover, the 'Jack, oh, god' he'd let out when he'd come on Jack's finger, but he'd never seen it. He hadn't seen a lot of people come, really; they turned their heads or he had his eyes closed or it was pitch black; half the time he didn't want to see a moment that naked anyway. Sure as hell nobody had ever held eye contact with him while they came. And he'd never let anyone, ever, come into his mouth.

He didn't feel pulses, just a bloom of fluid. A taste so intensely bitter and sweet and strange that it stunned his tongue and throat, almost choked him. Daniel let out breath instead of sound, just a sharp, broken whine at the end of it, choked off. His face didn't gape or screw up tight -- it smoothed and softened into an adoring sweetness. He kept looking directly into Jack's eyes, and for all the pupil dilation and the anguished glaze of pleasure, he was _there_ , completely present. He didn't disappear into his head or the eyeblink of white-out that Jack usually experienced. He stayed right there with Jack, and his orgasm face was just his in-love face, but completely bare, unguarded.

For a suspended moment, Jack forgot what he was doing. Then he swallowed, reflexively, or tried to, and the bitterness gagged him and his eyes teared and he closed them hard, tried hard to keep sucking, keep moving.

"Pull off," Daniel said, urging with his hands -- stroking, not pushing, but insistent. "Pull off. It's OK. Pull off."

Jack did, finally, feeling stubborn and reluctant and greedy, not wanting to let go until he'd sucked down every last drop. But it was barely in time as he burst out coughing, and then he was leaning back and dropping his head to cover his mouth, wipe his eyes, coughing out fractured apologies that only made him cough harder. He felt Daniel twisting, heard the clink of a glass lifted from between other glasses in the dish drainer, heard the sink water run.

"You're supposed to tell me to keep coughing," he grumped as Daniel handed him down the glass of water, and then coughed some more.

"Doing fine on your own," Daniel said. "Anyway you're not choking, it's just irritation, it's very alkaline and I'm probably dehydrated, sorry." He waited while Jack coughed some more, swallowed, cleared his throat, coughed, and then said, "Well, unless you're allergic to it. I know where you keep the epi pens."

Jack rolled onto his hip to turn himself and brace his back against the cabinet, and Daniel bent at the knees and got his butt on the floor and his hobbled legs stretched out to sit beside him. Jack finished coughing, and drank some water, and coughed again to see if there was any coughing left in him. That seemed to be it. He drank some more water. He didn't want to. It wasn't a bad taste. OK, it was a horrible taste, but it was wonderful, too, and he wanted to hang on to it, learn it, figure out how he could love it and not be able to stand it at the same time, but it was burning the crap out of his throat. He drank the rest of the water and set the glass down next to him on the floor. It clunked on the linoleum; his coordination was sloppy, as if he'd had a few shots.

He started to laugh.

"What?" Daniel said, rolling his head to look at him. The laughter was infectious even with an unknown cause; Jack could see the smile in the corner of his eye. "What is so funny?"

"Smoooooooth," Jack said, his voice rasped as hoarse as he knew it would be, and then coughed for another ten seconds, still laughing.

"Great," Daniel said, when it was finally quiet. "We'll be comparing my semen to Jim Beam for the rest of my life."

The rest of their lives sounded good to Jack. "No more Szechuan," he said.

"Nothing metabolizes that fast. It was probably the MRE I had for lunch. You had the Gerber's chicken. Mine may have said something about asparagus." He looked over again, hopefully. "No more MREs?"

"Yeah, T-bones and caviar. You can hump it."

"Maybe just some parsley then."

"Good plan."

"I'm sorry. I should have realized."

"What, that I'd never swallowed anything like that _in my life_?"

"Well, yeah."

"Well, stop apologizing. I'm sorrier than you are. I don't think you were done."

"I was done enough. _You_ were really turned on. And now you're not."

The boner had gone down with the coughing. "How do you know how turned on I was?"

"You were trying to rub off on your own pants. That might work better if you wore tighter pants, by the way."

"Nut huggers, check. Gourmet rations, check. Anything else?"

"You know you had it too far down to really swallow."

"I have since figured that out, Daniel, thank you."

"I want you to fuck me."

Jack's breath caught halfway into an inhale and he coughed again, hard.

"You said 'Anything else.' That's what else."

"OK," Jack said. He considered Daniel's efforts to untangle himself from his briefs and pant legs. " _Now?_ "

"If you like. Or later. In general. Next time we do something like this. Whenever. I just want to be clear about that." Free of the twisted clothes, Daniel pressed a long, warm leg against Jack's near leg. "I wasn't comfortable with the idea of intercourse in college, but that was twenty years ago. I never penetrated a boyfriend because nobody asked me to and my MO was to take what was on offer. In retrospect I think I attracted a lot of alpha males with my abstracted passivity, but I was more alpha in bed than they expected, so I kept ending up in all these standoffs. We're not college kids and we've known each other a long time, but I don't want this to be another one. I took an offhand comment you made as part of a highly condensed sexual history to mean that you didn't want oral sex, or you wouldn't like it if we did it. I don't want you to convince yourself that I'm not fuckable because I told you that in the past I wasn't into that."

After a long moment, Jack said, "Next time we confess a mutual attraction, we have sex _before_ the sexual history."

Daniel smiled. "We did have sex. I had sex with your finger. You had sex with my mouth." He rolled his head to turn the full effect of the smile on Jack. "Should we move this inside before I fill in any more details?"

"It was a joke," Jack said. He put a hand on the bare skin of Daniel's thigh, hooked an arm around Daniel's neck. "I want all the details." He pulled Daniel in for a deep, rough kiss. Daniel gave up his mouth with a low growl, then took Jack's in a hot assertion of muscle and leverage, wresting control of the kiss from him, then yielding it back. He got one hand on Jack's lower back and the other between his legs and thumbed Jack's returning hard-on through his zipper. In a minute they'd be humping on the floor. Jack really, really wanted Daniel in his bed. But he needed his side of this to be clear as Daniel's. He dragged his lips away from the addictive sweetness of Daniel's and said, low and hoarse against Daniel's ear, "Everything's on offer here. Everything's mutual. I want to have sex with a lot more of you than your finger. I love you. I want everything with you."

Daniel moaned in response, a breathy, needy sound that left Jack shivering with desire, and then they were up, somehow, navigating the strew of Daniel's clothes on the floor, the dusk-lapped hallway, the bedroom clutter, and Daniel was stripping him bare in his own bed, and if the folks back on the planet came anywhere close to this level of happy, he'd count that mission a success, because it was one hell of a happy ending on this side.

> > > > >

Jack remembered a dusty, smelly tent city in a straggle of ailing fields under a brittle white sky. When they stepped out of the event horizon, cool greenness filled his senses, a golden-honey fall of sunlight on a thick surrounding of trees, a sweet citrusy scent on a fresh breeze. A dozen racing, tumbling children crossed the grassy expanse at the foot of the gate steps and scattered among the trees, leaving an echo of happy laughter in the air behind them. A welcoming party of adults beyond them had paused, and started walking towards the gate again once they'd passed. Most of them wore robes dyed in what Jack recalled was the elders' pattern.

This time the elders weren't all men. They weren't all elders, either. At their center walked Keshla. She had a small child by the hand. Jack was pretty sure he'd have pegged the boy for about two Terran years old whether or not that was the age he was expecting him to be.

He looked nothing at all like Daniel.

Jack felt Daniel's brows go up. He felt Daniel's peripheral vision on him, the shift of Daniel's weight towards him, Daniel instinctively seeking his reaction, his opinion. He gave his head a minute shake -- _Don't say a word, we don't know the story yet, don't queer whatever her deal is here_ \-- and Daniel, understanding, gave a minute nod, and relaxed into his own wide smile of greeting.

A little more than a year after the last time they were here, SG-8 had checked back and reported that Keshla was the mother of a healthy four-month-old but the local political situation had gotten dicey and it might be best if the SGC stayed clear until things settled down. By then, Daniel's prediction that he might do the same thing to Jack that he'd done to his previous partners had also borne out, and he was off exploring strange new dimensions and had apparently pretty much forgotten about Jack. So the report was a kick in the gut, although Jack had tried to be happy for the girl, and grateful that there was something left of Daniel on the corporeal plane. He'd failed, but he'd tried.

A year after that, they'd been in the middle of the thing with Anubis, and most of their regular check-ins were falling by the wayside.

Now, with the Goa'uld and the Replicators routed and the Free Jaffa doing their own free thing and a charged ZPM procured for them by alternative selves whose likely suffering and death Jack tried to appreciate but not dwell on, the SGC was catching up with dozens of populations they'd touched and then lost touch with. Now, in peacetime, there was sometimes even the latitude to follow up personally -- even if as SGC commander he had to wait through two thorough recons, one by MALP and one by gate team. Daniel had waited with him. They'd both managed to keep from asking directly about Keshla or Enkula or the baby.

Keshla click-pop-rattled. Daniel click-pop-rattled back, slowly and awkwardly, having been able to spend only about twenty minutes brushing up on his own linguistic notes from their first visit. While the other elders formed a semicircle around her, beaming, Keshla moved behind the boy, took him by the shoulders, crouched down, and pressed him forward.

"She's presenting the offspring I provided," Daniel murmured to Jack as they went down the stone steps side by side. "He's the symbol of healing and rebirth for their people."

"Great," Jack murmured back, watching the little boy stand up straight in brave defiance of his instinct to cringe away from the looming strangers descending on him. "No pressure."

While Daniel hunkered down and said hello, other villagers started coming over, leaving their work in the commons and the fields and the alleys between their tents to gather around the gate. For every two or three adults, Jack noticed, there was at least one toddler. Every other adult held a babe in arms. Every child looked hale and hearty. They weren't kidding about healing and rebirth. In three short years, something close to miraculous had happened here.

Daniel had gotten the boy giggling, trying to teach him to shake hands, a concept the boy seemed to find mystifying and ridiculous and irresistible in equal parts. Keshla was laughing, the elders were beaming even brighter, everybody seemed happy. When the boy abruptly realized that he'd let a big scary stranger grasp his fingers, he screwed up his face and drew breath for a mighty wail. Keshla looked around for help, and a young man came softly swooping in from the side. At his reassuring touch the child instantly calmed down.

The onetime boyfriend, Jack thought; now the consort, or the husband, or whatever passed for partner/spouse in this culture; the man the boy knew as his father; and, Jack was sure, the biological father, too. If he'd had any doubts, the look the fellow shot Daniel would have put them to rest. It said, _Mine_ , about both mother and child. It said, _Don't even think about it, chappa'ai guy_. And when Daniel straightened to a respectful posture and drew his hand back from the child, the young man's expression softened with relief, and something close to gratitude flickered in his dark eyes. No one but Jack and Keshla saw the exchange; Jack scanned the crowd to be sure.

He found Enkula standing in what looked like a place of honor, chin high, eyes sharp as ever. Holding his gaze, she inclined her head and upper body, just enough for him to see but not enough to draw anyone else's attention. The ghost of a smile crossed her lips as he nodded back. It looked like acknowledgment that they shared a secret understanding.

He supposed they did. She and Keshla had had phenomenal luck: the boy was healthy and looked exactly like his mother. Apparently nobody had guessed that he wasn't the issue of the offworlder union they'd traded for three years ago. Keshla had gotten pregnant anyway -- at Enkula's instigation, Jack figured, since as chaperone she was in a unique position to encourage and protect -- and the two women had parlayed the rise in caste into political gold. But that didn't explain the agricultural improvements, the healthy children, the _number_ of children. Jack cast a significant glance out at the thick leafy trees and around at all the people, and returned his gaze to Enkula, and tilted his head.

With a fierce grin spreading across her face, she drew one hand out of the other sleeve and displayed something round and palm-size and orange-colored to him before curling her hand back down.

A tangerine, like the one that Daniel had offered to Keshla.

Jack looked around at the profusion of greenery again. Yeah, those were orderly groves, not random growth. Yeah, the trees were fruiting. Yeah, the fruit was orange.

Daniel had left two kinds of seed, and the kind they'd given barely a thought was the one that took root.

"It's almost like the smallpox syndrome I was worried about, only with a healing instead of a deadly result," Daniel said that night in bed, relaxing in the circle of Jack's arm. "Or like, I don't know, kudzu. Africanized honey bees."

"Kudzu it turns out can feed a starving continent."

"Bees whose sting cures cancer."

After the official welcome, the little boy's father had lifted him into his arms and carried him off while Keshla, now the village emissary to gate travellers, conducted Daniel and Jack to a kind of tea ceremony presided over by her grandmother. It was a chance for them to speak more freely, and find out what had happened after they left. As Jack had suspected, lots of sex with the boyfriend had insured that Keshla came with child, and when the baby was born healthy, her family's status rose and she married the boyfriend. Meanwhile Enkula had planted and carefully tended the tangerine seeds, and the fruit had turned out to be a cure for the worst of the villagers' ailments. Wielding the power of her superfruit, Enkula got the caste system eliminated by fiat, and with it went the inbreeding problem. They were back to trading goods and gate access with the nomadic clans. They were healthy and at peace for the first time in three generations.

"I'd like to know what deficiency the fruit rectified, and how they got deficient in the first place," Daniel said. "If their diet changed, or the kind of radiation the atmosphere filters, or if they're transplants from another world with needs that planet couldn't meet, or what."

"I know," Jack said, running light fingertips up and down Daniel's bare back. "Maybe someday, if they change their minds." They'd been grateful and gracious hosts for a couple of hours, and then very politely terminated the visit. They were less inclined to accept medical attention or agricultural aid than they'd been three years ago. Had no objection to an annual check-in and no interest in anything more.

"At least we've got the rest of the tablets," Daniel said. He'd received them as a parting gift from Keshla herself, as her people had no use for them. His staff had dived with relish into analyzing and translating. In sharp contrast to three years earlier, Daniel seemed to have no interest at all. They were verifiably Ancient tablets, and since his last ascension and the end of the war with Anubis, he'd had very little use for the Ancients.

"Yeah," Jack said. He craned his neck back to get a better look at Daniel's face. "You do know that you did it again, right?"

Daniel didn't pretend not to understand. "No I didn't. Sha'uri and Skaara did it on Abydos, not me. Keshla and Enkula did it here."

"You planted the seeds," Jack said.

"We were the catalyst," Daniel corrected. He smiled, and ran his hand down under the covers, between Jack's legs, a sweetly galvanizing touch. "So were they."

Jack opened his thighs and urged Daniel up and over to settle between them. Voice thick, struggling to get the line out before speech deserted him entirely, he said, "I don't suppose there's much point sending a fruit basket."

"They changed the world with a tangerine." Daniel reached to pull the cord on the bedside lamp, and said into the darkness and Jack's skin, "Imagine what they'll do with a Granny Smith."

^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^

**Author's Note:**

> When this was a work-in-progress, [a piece of it](http://paian.dreamwidth.org/107159.html) made the wippet wordle that led to '[Come What May](http://paian.dreamwidth.org/135779.html).'


End file.
